(Newser)
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Where there is water, there could be life, NASA scientists say—and they have found evidence of a vast amount of water on Ganymede, Jupiter's biggest moon and the biggest moon in the solar system. Ganymede is the only one known to have its own magnetic field, and Hubble Space Telescope researchers studied the auroras the field produces to detect a huge, salty ocean under its surface that is believed to hold more water than all the oceans on Earth, Space.com reports. The researchers believe the ocean under the planet's icy crust, which earlier research had hinted at, is 60 miles deep, more than 50 miles deeper than the deepest spot in our planet's oceans, Scientific American reports.

"The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place," says NASA's director of planetary science—and the method the Hubble researchers used to look inside Ganymede could detect oceans on planets far beyond our solar system, experts say. To detect water on exoplanets by monitoring auroras "may require a much larger telescope than Hubble, it may require some future space telescope, but nevertheless, it's a tool now that we didn't have prior to this work," an Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy spokeswoman tells Space.com. (Earlier this year, NASA detected signs of a subsurface ocean capable of hosting life on the solar system's biggest asteroid.)

Hmm. The gravity on Ganymede is 15 percent of Earth, so you could scuba dive safely to maybe 800 feet.

mehrheit

Mar 16, 2015 8:12 AM CDT

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT GANYMEDE ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE USE THEM TOGETHER USE THEM IN PEACE

JERZJOE

Mar 16, 2015 7:30 AM CDT

Vast Ocean Detected Inside Jupiter Moon! SO! What are we going to do now!! Terraform the Jupiter Moon? Terraforming (literally, "Earth-shaping") of a planet, moon, or other body is the theoretical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface topography or ecology to be similar to the biosphere of Earth to make it habitable by Earth-like life. Yeah sure! Like this will happen in our lifetime!! and who's going to pay for that! There ya go ALL!!